It is sweetly encouraging to imagine traveling from one side of eternity to the other and arriving to find you are both expected and wanted, that God, his people, and his angels are already preparing to receive you with great celebration. Such is the hope and the confidence of the gospel.

Local news recently reported on a man who had made a long and difficult journey to Canada. He had been invited and persuaded by some of his fellow countrymen, people who had already made the same journey themselves. They told him it would be worth the difficulty of escaping a controlling regime, the troubles of making a complicated voyage, and the expense of many modes of travel. Yet when he arrived in Canada he found it had all been a scam. He learned to his sorrow that no one was waiting for him. He was not expected, he was not wanted, and he was not welcome.

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to travel from one side of the planet to the other, only to learn that you were neither expected nor wanted? Have you ever considered what it would like to sell all you own and invest it in a perilous journey, only to find that it had all been a ruse? Such was this man’s realization and this man’s sorrow.

Like that man, we have all been invited to leave behind all we hold dear in this world, or to be willing to at least.

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